Watching TV (Eliza)

Before I got to Japan I planned on becoming a regular at an okonomiyaki shop for this assignment.  I thought it would be perfect, since okonomiyaki is my favorite Japanese food.  After I arrived, however, I realized that it would be rude to my host family to eat out enough to become a regular.  My next idea was to become a regular at a bakery, and I started to work on that, but between homework, studying for quizzes and traveling to nearby places, I haven’t gone enough to be considered a regular.  The food is really good and I plan on returning many times.  By the time I leave Japan I probably will be a regular at the bakery.

Fruit tart from the bakery.

So, the only thing I have been doing regularly is watching Meitantei Conan every Saturday, or if I am not there when it airs my host parents record it for me and I watch it when I get back.  Not long after I first moved in, my host parents found out that I like Meitantei Conan and offered to let me watch it on their TV each week.  Since I never had the opportunity to watch Conan on TV before, I was quite excited, though a little nervous that I wouldn’t know what was happening sometimes.  Because of the time that Conan airs and the time my host family has dinner, one or both of my host parents are always in the kitchen while I’m watching it.  After the first time, my host mother was quite surprised that I had understood pretty much all of the episode.  I explained that was because it was from the manga, which I had already read.

Conan manga, though this is from earlier in the series.

Sometimes my host parents will watch a little with me while they wait for something to cook.  Every time they are surprised that I don’t get completely confused by what is happening, since Conan is a mystery series and uses a lot of technical terms sometimes.  A couple weeks after I moved in, the episode was an anime original, so it wasn’t one that I already knew.  Still, I understood most of it, which impressed them even more, since I didn’t know the plot beforehand.  There were words that I didn’t know, but I could still understand enough to watch the entire episode.  Watching Conan has become a part of the weekly routine here.  At this point they would be surprised if I didn’t want to watch it.  I’ve learned that I can understand more Japanese than I usually give myself credit for.  There are still many words and phrases that I get stuck on, but I comprehend more than I expected I could.